The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism has issued an instruction calling on all central and local authorities and all Lao people across the country to preserve national customs and ensure order and safety whilst celebrating the upcoming Lao New Year (Pi Mai).

The issuing of the instruction is aimed at avoiding all forms of conduct which are neither appropriate nor customary, and returning to the way Pi Mai was celebrated by Lao people in the past.

Under the instruction, the ministry called on all members of the public to conform to notice no. 457 from the Government Office concerning the organising of Pi Mai celebrations.

The ministry has instructed that celebration parties should be moderate, avoiding extravagant expenditure.

Entertainment activities and alcohol consumption should not take place in temples or other places of worship and drinking and recreation activities should not violate the prohibitions defined by the officials.

Ablution is one of the main activities in Pi Mai celebrations alongside merit making (Baci) that Lao people have performed from ancient times.

In this regard the ministry has instructed that clean water mixed with perfume is preferred for pouring on Buddha images, elderly people and friends, while the ablution should be performed in a polite and respectful manner.

Clean water should be used for the fun activities everywhere, avoiding the use of dirty water, paint, water mixed with i rritants and other waste water. The throwing of plastic bags of water, ice or any type of dirty water at passing motorists and motorbike riders is prohibited.

Indecent public behaviour, spraying water on passers-by and vehicles, enforced drenching with water and improper behaviour towards females are not allowed, and all activities should not impede traffic.

Males and females of all ages should be dressed modestly for performing their washing of the Buddha's images, and greeting the monks in the temples. Women should wear the traditional long skirt (sinh) and modest top reflecting original Lao customs.

Women are not allowed to wear a short skirt nor skimpy tops either going to the temple or in public places during the festival.

In this regard, officials will give a warning and instructions to offenders, possibly even detaining them depending on the severity of the case.

The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism calls on all people throughout the country to respect these instructions so that the Pi Mai celebrations this year will bring only a joyful atmosphere and happiness while preserving the national customs and traditions.

The government wants to maintain some standards to prevent the culture from caving in to despicable western influence. Seems sensible to me.

Maybe western influence is a good thing ? Look at wherethey had gotten their influence before and now.The job of goverment is to govern, not to butt in our daily live.Next thing they gonna wanna do is bann porn :D Comeon man, if i wanna drink myself silly shouldn't thatbe my problem ? as long i don't get in the car and drive or hurt anybody .

A staggering number of Lao people drink and drive from my experience. And the government should take initiative to discourage the drinking culture because it is counterproductive and potentially tragic.

Thailand has been thoroughly westernized and it is evident in their lack of genuine culture. I don't want to see the same thing happen in Laos.

A staggering number of Lao people drink and drive from my experience. And the government should take initiative to discourage the drinking culture because it is counterproductive and potentially tragic.

Thailand has been thoroughly westernized and it is evident in their lack of genuine culture. I don't want to see the same thing happen in Laos.

It won't happen on the same scale because Thailand will always have a proportionately greater number of tourists than Laos. Europeans generally seek beach spots in SE Asia because they want to forget how cold and dreary it is on their end of the Eurasian landmass.The government of Laos can and should take action to prevent rapid cultural diffusion as many elements of Western culture are problematic and contrary to contemporary Lao society.

A temple is a place of tradition. Wearing a short skirt and a skimpy top is disrespectful to the beautiful Buddhist tradition and offensive to the monks. Lao women should have dignity and dress conservatively. Otherwise they will end up like their Thai sisters and the nation will attract undesirables.

The almighty $$$ corrupt anything and everything.As for being the moral police, shouldn't that be enforceby property manager ? I agree with woman not wearing short with their butt cheek hanging out at the temple.When i was in Thailand they didn't even let the men go in the temple wearing short.I'm just saying doesn't the goverment have better things to do ?

The almighty $$$ corrupt anything and everything.As for being the moral police, shouldn't that be enforceby property manager ? I agree with woman not wearing short with their butt cheek hanging out at the temple.When i was in Thailand they didn't even let the men go in the temple wearing short.I'm just saying doesn't the goverment have better things to do ?

I agree with TexasCowboy but I think it's already too late to save Laos. Now even all the small towns in Thailand have KFC and McDonalds and stuff and everyone is on facebook starting from age 10, even in the rural villages.

Why I think Laos cannot be saved? A multitude of reasons. I had been to Laos about 10 years ago and nearly every single woman was wearing traditional Lao attire (Sinh) and now you rarely see any Lao women wear those except for the very impoverished tribal people and the ones that are forced to wear it because they work in a government job or something. No one wears it out of free will anymore, and if the government didn't force students and employees to wear Sinh then all Lao women would've stopped wearing it by now because they want to be westernized so bad.

In Vientiane no one listens to Luuk Tung anymore they all listen to f-cking rock music and English language pop. Again, the only people who enjoy traditional Lao/Thai music anymore are the impoverished tribal people and the poorest of the poor Lao people. Once they get a little bit of money, they stop listening to Lao music completely. What's wrong with this world?

You really think having money is more important than keeping your identity alive? If that's so then why not just sell your soul to Satan for some money. (That was just an expression I don't really believe in Satan and I'm not Christian but I hope you get my point.)

(Edit) Question for the admin, since you live in Vientiane and you may know, do you like Luuk Tung Lao musc? Do any of your friends like it? I'm guessing the answer is NO

Jazz and country music both originated in the United States. They are not traditional forms of music. Judy Garland was a Hollywood actress who undermined the moral fabric of American society. She does not embody traditional values.

The world certainly has changed. Western media and marketing has created a culture of entitlement, to the extent that psychologists are now concerned about a narcissism epidemic. The US might be an importer of goods but it is an exporter of culture. Our culture will poison the minds of the rest of the planet.

But not for long! In the next fifteen years, the real estate bubble in China will burst and what will inevitably follow is a global economic catastrophe. Add to this the decline of the prestige of the dollar and a dwindling supply of energy and we are now looking at a world with much less commerce & exchange. City dwellers in the next five decades will simply not have the resources to sustain their current lifestyle. Most national fiat currencies will collapse and these urban dwellers will find themselves unable to pay for the necessities of life.

I look forward to this future and only hope that farmers will refuse to feed, clothe, and shelther their hopeless urban counterpart. Their existence has been parasitical both to the farmers who they poorly compensate and steal from and to the planet which they have polluted.

Mak Nad, most Lao people outside of Vientiane listen to Luk Tung. Most of the country gals still wear the sinh and are morally upright and not promiscuous. I don't know why you take issue with the presence of a KFC. Although the food is garbage, it will not lead to the destruction of Lao culture. Even before the industrial revolution, there were cross-cultural exchanges of cuisine. Not trying to defend KFC, just in the grand scheme of things it is rather insignificant when compared to the destructive effects of the media.

Mak Nad, although you probably don't understand certain trends of history (because it takes literally thousands of hours of study, I have been studying this issue for ten years now), you seem to have the capacity to understand something is amiss. Just hold fast and realize that although we won't see the total collapse of globalization and the industrial world in our lifetime, it will happen before the entire planet is consumed and contaminated. Take pleasure in the fact that we are already in the beginning stages of the collapse and remain hopeful that the process will be accelerated by unforeseeable events. Also prepare yourself, learn farming, mechanics, survival skill, really anything that will distinguish you from the hopeless city dwelling masses. Even earn money and take from their economy so long as you make a plan to use that money to acquire land of your own.

I have a few things I want to address here. First of all, country music is still very popular in the United States, although Jazz would probably appeal to an older demographic of people. You know Taylor Swift, you know, one of the most popular artists of today? Well, her music is a blend of country and pop music. So admin's statement about country music being phased out in the U.S.A. is not true. Also in the Southern United States country music is still very popular among certain demographics. As for Jazz, I think older black people in the south/east coast still listen to it, and maybe some hipsters in NYC.

What makes you think Luuk Tung is some old outdated thing that should stopped being listened to because it's 2014? New Luuk Tung songs are still being made every day. Even in Thailand all the older people from the provinces still like listening to Luuk Tung, and most of the male teenagers/boys in the country like Luuk Tung. The only people in Thailand who don't like Luuk Tuung are the pseudo nu wave Hi-So tweenie bopper 12 year old airhead girls that screech whenever a handsome guy appears on their sh-tty Thai soap operas and the Hi-So Thai people who have a lot of money and status and see Luuk Tung as low-status redneck hillbilly music. It's not about the world changing, but about people changing due to social and economic divisions. In most east and southeast Asian countries, being "international" and speaking "Engrish" is seen as a high status thing, and so listening to Luuk Tung would detract from their "high status image" and make them "lose face." Westerners are not impressed when Asian people try to speak English in order to seem "civilized" and "upper-class." In fact, they feel the complete opposite. Most feel pretty appalled that so many "high-class Asians" have such low opinions of their own fellow countrymen.

Any educated American/other westerner understands the value of one's cultural heritage and respects the cultures of different countries around the world. That is why Americans enjoy going to visit countries that are not necessarily developed in terms of economics, but have a rich cultural heritage. The higher class Asians couldn't give a sh-t about these countries and just see them as underdeveloped wastelands. I have had Thai people tell me to my face that they will never go to Laos or Cambodia because they see these people as inferior and poor and those were their exact words.

It's not just Vientiane that has Hi-So people who think they have "progressed" beyond their fellow countrymen and are more "developed." I have also encountered them in Ta Khaek, Pak Se, and even in Savannakhet. I have been to almost every province in Laos and all the city dwellers share this common theme. I also encounter this in the cities in Thailand. Countryside Thais in Isan and Northern Thailand can be just as nice and sincere as Lao people but the problem with Thailand is only that globalization has taken a firmer grip on the nation and caused large scale social, political and economic divide and weakened the unity of the country.

As for why I get upset when I see KFC and McDonalds, I can answer that. It's not really the food they serve that upsets me it's just because of the fact that they serve as symbols that indicate the area is changing for the worst, and they are symbols that indicate further destruction of local culture. Basically when they build KFCs it's like putting up a sign saying "This area has been selected for American Imperialism, we will continue to strengthen our grip on this area."

In my opinion I think America is wholly responsible for the demise of Lao culture. If it wasn't for America's constant attacks on the Soviet Union then Laos would have had a trading partner and it's economy would never have collapsed, thus it would never have had to open up the country to the outside world.

Laos was closed off from the outside world up until the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Lao economy started to fail because the U.S. doesn't do business with Marxist states, so the only choice it had was to open its economy and get flooded with American trash culture.

Life is short and we will all be dead when we are about 100 years old, so just listen to the type of music that you enjoy, be nice to each other and respect other people's choice of music.

None of these genre of music will exist in hundreds of years from now because they will be very outdated. Future humans will be referring to us as prehistoric people, as we refer to those in the past as prehistoric people.

So much for western culture invasion. So long money says, then, let money say. Any culture has merits.

I think the property bubbles wont burst in China. It will just stay there.

And again , from every word above, I think we would be better if we are trained to be tarzan.

I also think farmers would sell their products to homeless city deweller in case of outflow to rural areas.

Last, if young like facebook or twitter or some social media tools, let them have. I like Jazz and Country too and rock althought I am a little too old. I respect traditon and also love icecream of KFC.

As for Thai girls, all Thai girls I know are very very very good. I should say much much much better than the girls from the place I live. Maybe the Cowboy knows it since he lived in China for some years. Humans are implanted with genes, character wont change even outside conditions change. But, I am not racist. ;D ;D ;D, I am Humanist. ha ha ha ;D ;D.

Yes, I know. For the most part Thai girls are still very conservative and not very slutty. I just bash them because they have become extremely westernized and now I see the same pattern happening in some parts of Laos.

As for the people constantly changing and evolving, I don't buy that at all. It's complete nonsense. There are still hunter-gatherer groups living scattered all over the world. Indigenous people of Central and South America who still retain their original ways of live, hunting for food in the forest. These people have been living completely free lives, without worries about the economy, or making payments on their new car, or the mortgage on their home. They don't get obese or get cancer like "civilized" people either. These people only started to become miserable when Europeans invaded their land and brought diseases which killed them and cut down forests and hunted animals to extinction, driving away their food sources. You seriously think development is a good thing? You are so delusional. These people need no money. Even today in Malaysia there are tribal people whose culture dictates that they take no more than they need, and up until the Malaysian government started cutting down the forests and attacking the native people with guns and arresting them, they were living completely free lives. The government just made efforts to "civilize" them and assimilate them into mainstream society.

Laos also had several groups, such as Hmong, Brao, Katu and many other tribes for example, that were living in peace with nature until the government tried to "civilize" them by making them think they need money, electricity and consumer items. This is all just a scam by greedy, capitalist scumbag pigs. These people were living just fine until capitalism told them the way they were living was wrong and they needed to change things.

The hunter-gatherer groups live in that kind of environment, so they adapt to them.

You are using the internet because you live in a different environment to them where there is more advanced technology. You wouldn't have had this kind of privilege many years ago because the world is changing and for the better.

I'm sorry, how is the world changing for the better when we have ecosystems being wiped out every day because of capitalist animals and Lan Xang (Land of a Million Elephants) has less than 2,000 elephants left? You know in places like Thailand and Laos there used to be these things called plants and trees? Have you ever heard of them? The only green thing everyone cares about now is money. Back then in the past you didn't need money to survive, you could just gather food from nature.

The world is not changing for the better, people are just becoming more greedy and the want more money. People will do anything for money, even destroy the earth and destroy nature and everyone is sitting back and not caring. Did you forget why Laos was called Lan Xang? Maybe you should change the name to ບໍ່ເຖຶງສອງພັນຊ້າງ

I'm sorry, how is the world changing for the better when we have ecosystems being wiped out every day because of capitalist animals and Lan Xang (Land of a Million Elephants) has less than 2,000 elephants left? You know in places like Thailand and Laos there used to be these things called plants and trees? Have you ever heard of them? The only green thing everyone cares about now is money. Back then in the past you didn't need money to survive, you could just gather food from nature.

The world is not changing for the better, people are just becoming more greedy and the want more money. People will do anything for money, even destroy the earth and destroy nature and everyone is sitting back and not caring. Did you forget why Laos was called Lan Xang? Maybe you should change the name to ບໍ່ເຖຶງສອງພັນຊ້າງ

In any country, animals are becoming less as human population grows and there are more infrastructure. If you don't appreciate what life has to offer in a modern society then you're more than welcome to drop everything including the internet and go to live in the jungle.

It's human nature to be greedy. You can be greedy because you want more food or you want more power, and not necessarily just about money. People have been greedy for thousands of years even when there was no money. That's why there are conflicts, that's why people fought each other using spears and swords. One wife was never enough for Kings in past. They want more and more and more.

Lan Xang was established through greed. There were many deaths and suffering in the war to turn the country into Lan Xang.

Just enjoy life while you are still alive. Earth will be destroyed by the Sun and not by humans, everything on this planet will be gone one day.

I didn't say I don't appreciate modern socieites, just the capitalist aspect of it. Capitalism is causing most of the destruction of the forests because instead of growing food to eat people need more and more land to grow cash crops to export and sell so they can have money to buy luxury items that they don't need such as TVs.

I support socialism and planned state economies and blocking American goods from entering the economy, sort of like Cuba. Laos was doing everything right before 1990, it should have never opened the country.

People who destruct the forest, people who are corrupt, people who do bad things will be dealt with accordingly when they die. I don't worry about things that I don't have any control over, that's how I live my life. I have only got about 100 years to live so I want to do good things, be happy and whatever happens on this Earth, happens.

My mum once worked for the American Embassy in Vientiane and we're spoilt with their goods that ordinary citizens didn't have. It's crazy to block their goods when they make the best quality goods. Every country should be opened and not live in their own little world.

It doesn't matter what economy you support, all Governments lie to you.

I didn't say I don't appreciate modern socieites, just the capitalist aspect of it. Capitalism is causing most of the destruction of the forests because instead of growing food to eat people need more and more land to grow cash crops to export and sell so they can have money to buy luxury items that they don't need such as TVs.

I am sure you want to have an alternative taste of life. Before you fully and finally taste the wonderful life of planned economiy, come to China to taste half-socialism flavor. ;D

Buk Nut wrote on 19th Jun, 2014 at 4:25am:

I support socialism and planned state economies and blocking American goods from entering the economy, sort of like Cuba. Laos was doing everything right before 1990, it should have never opened the country.

First of all, I'm worried because I want to try to make the world a better place, but I often feel powerless because I'm just one person and I can't make a change.

Second, things such as culture and nature should be preserved for future generations so they can enjoy these things like we did. I'm not just worried about myself, but the future generations and my grandchildren and great grandchildren if I ever have kids.

New products can always be made, they are worthless and have no real meaning. After many years of use, products can break, and then factories can just make a new one. Cultures are things that survive over many generations if they are preserved correctly and do not receive outside interference. Once a tradition or culture is gone it is gone forever, it cannot be made again in a factory, same thing with languages and animal species.

I care about things that actual have real value, not objects which can be replaced by making new ones. Life is not about owning things, but if that's what you want from life then that is your choice and your own right, but I prefer to see things a different way.

We all want to make the world a better place but you have no control over the situation so move on and enjoy life while you're still here.

Every country is constantly changing. There's always change in everything, the culture in Laos today is different to the culture from many years ago and that's not a surprise. Some products can last for the rest of your life and they are irreplaceable.

Like you said, it's everyone's own choice. How people want to live is up to them, whether they want to live the Lao way of life or the western way of life. You can't tell people what to do, and you can only worry about your own life. Be at peace with yourself.

Yeah, you can't control how people live their lifes, but when you are trying to find someone to spend your life with, ideally you are going to want someone with similar goals as you, so you are able to get along with them. Otherwise the only thing that will happen is fighting.

You can be similar and get along with each other now, but you don't know what's going to happen down the track. You can't predict the future.

People say they love each other forever but still end up breaking up. At a wedding ceremony, there is an official statement to approve your marriage, but there is no official statement to certify that you must be married and be with each other forever.

I thought Miss Administrator Saovaluck was engaged to forum poster Larb Deep. We should not speculate as it is a private affair.

Laos needs a socialist government and their economy should be planned by the state.. Having access to the banking resources of the United State is beneficial for the promotion of multi-national trade. Laos is too small of a country to practice self-reliance. Access to healthcare, telecommunications, and transport technologies from surrounding countries will boost the economy and increase the prosperity of the people. That said, the government should strictly regulate the internet and completely restrict access to outside media. Although this is disadvantageous to me, the country should also place harsh restrictions on traveling to discourage a Western tourist presence in the country.

Isolationism is a reason why Burma has yet to succumb to the iniquities of Westernization.

China is a great example as to why Capitalism is a failure. Under Chairman Mao, the Chinese people were unified in their unswerving pursuit of national success and Socialist glory. From the 1980's onward, the country opened up to the rest of the world. Western corporations, lured by cheap labor, brought outdated and dangerous industrial machinery which polluted the environment. The ecological tragedy that unfolded was and is unprecedented. A fifth of the fresh water supply is unusable for both humans and animals in China. The air in Beijing that seeing the sun is now exceptional.

If Laos was not socialist then it would be in chaos and disorder like Cambodia. Hookers on the street, beggars e everywhere, and crime and child exploitation. Some countries function better under socialism. Some examples of capitalist hellholes are the Philippines, India, and Cambodia. Socialism works better in east and southeast asia, mostly because the population is not educated enough to make their own decisions and they will succumb to the western imperialists with ease. Countries like Korea and Japan are capitalist and bend over to their American overlords, but at least the population has the intelligence to make their own political decisions. I'm not looking down on my people frm the Suwannapum area because I come from there myself, but they are not educated enough to decide for themselves. It's only a matter of time before Burna becomes like Thailand bro. I've met a lot of people from Burma and those from Yangon are very westernized and listen to stuff like Justin Bieber and Taylot Swift. Actually I respect drug addicts and prostitutes more than people who bow down to the American overlords. Burma is opening up for tourism so go there fasst TexasCowboy before it is completely destroyed.

Peter the US outsourced all of its production to China and so does most of the world, so all the factories are in China. If the US didnt have China for support it'd be the same way.

Untrue.

America was highly industrialized only a few decades ago. We put restrictions on pollutants and required factories to be clean. It worked here. It can work everywhere else.

Perhaps part of the reason Chinese production is so cheap is that they don't have such restrictions. But that is their choice.

You cannot rationally blame "capitalism" for all of the evils of the world. You can blame the selfishness of people. And people in a communist country are fully as capable of being selfish as anyone else.

Perhaps a country like Laos is better with a planned economy, at least for now. But it depends on what the planners do. And there is nothing in the universe that necessarily makes them "better" people than the most ruthless industrialist capitalist.

Oh ... and we have not "outsourced all of [our] production to China" either. I work in an aerospace manufacturing plant. We make plenty of our own stuff. And we have outsourced to other places like Mexico, too. Our manufacturing plant there is clean and up to U.S. standards. And they are glad to get the jobs. (Mexico is about 10 miles from where I live.)

The United States government certainly deserves credit for their implementation of several environmental control measures and for the construction of numerous public infrastructure projects. The United States, however, refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol and the consumption of fossil fuel is unsustainable by any measure. American corporations exploit the corruption and greed inherent in governments of the developing world. Because environmental control is costly, they operate their factories in Asian countries where there is a lack of regulation.

The United States continues to have problems managing its fresh water supply, particularly in the south central region of the United States.

The fertility rate in the United States is barely above the minimum threshold to maintain a steady population. The white population is actually shrinking in number. The population of countries in Western Europe, Korea and Japan are also plummeting. All of these countries follow some form of neoliberalism.

The warmongering United States will soon crumble. The dollar has kept their economy afloat for too long.

Socialism is the only way. Workers of the world must organize before we are enslaved.

Socialism is the only way. Workers of the world must organize before we are enslaved.

Anyone who expects an "-ism" to be the solution to the world's problems is due to be sorely disappointed.

And there is no such thing as "workers of the world." There are workers of lots of various regions and industries, all with different personal abilities, needs, and relationships with the businesses that they work for.

A capitalistic system contains a method for workers to organize through labor unions. (These can sometimes become more powerful than the businesses that their members work for, and this is not always a good thing for the workers. Any time you have a concentration of power, you have the potential for people at the top to be motivated to move more for their own benefit than for the good of "the masses." Just recently in my area, a corporation wanted to do a large project that would have created thousands of jobs for several years and many hundreds of jobs continuously after that. The local unions demanded the exclusive right to dictate certain terms. And now thousands of people are not employed who would have been otherwise.)

And it is a humorous (or sad, depending upon one's perspective) irony that in many "workers' republic" (communist) countries, independently organized workers' unions that might wish to promote an opinion or agenda that is opposed to the direction of the Almighty State are illegal.

The terms "for the people's benefit" and "socialism" are not necessarily equivalent. There always must be a hierarchical command structure, and the "good" (or "evil") that the organization does is largely dependent upon the whim of those in charge.

Creative people demand certain freedoms of expression and action. And they almost certainly are better off if they are not living under the restrictions of a State with 100% control over economic and social planning.

It was the organization of workers in a labor union in Poland that was a primary factor in bringing down that country's Soviet-era government, which, in turn, was a major triggering factor in the demise of the rest of that "Union" of "Socialist republics."

It is possible for central control to be good for an area. Maybe it is good for Laos. I cannot judge that from here. But worldwide "socialism" cannot be a solution any more than worldwide "capitalism" can be.

There are no panacea solutions with a suffix of "-ism." Human nature makes them impossible. There is only individual learning and slow social evolution.

Part of the solution is for each region to require environmental protections. Another part of the solution is for local workers to unionize. This can raise their standard of living as it did for workers in the United States in the past. But it will also drive jobs back to the U.S. and this is very likely one of the reasons that they are not quick to do it.

The United States certainly attempts to interfere too much with other areas of the world because its leaders don't fully understand them.

Iraq was a fiasco. But "warmongering?" People are still being killed in Iraq every day and they're not being killed by Americans, just as, for the most part, they have not been for a good many years now.

America is no more "warmongering" than any other country would be if it had the power, and I dare to say it is a whole lot less so than many, even among those that it has dealt with recently.

And world power certainly will continue to shift as it always has in the past. Hopefully it will become more evenly distributed in the future. But don't look for the United States to "crumble" any time soon.

The United States certainly attempts to interfere too much with other areas of the world because its leaders don't fully understand them.

Iraq was a fiasco. But "warmongering?" People are still being killed in Iraq every day and they're not being killed by Americans, just as, for the most part, they have not been for a good many years now.

America is no more "warmongering" than any other country would be if it had the power, and I dare to say it is a whole lot less so than many, even among those that it has dealt with recently.

And world power certainly will continue to shift as it always has in the past. Hopefully it will become more evenly distributed in the future. But don't look for the United States to "crumble" any time soon.

The warmongering nature of the United States is the reason it has so much power. A private weapons industry sprung up during WWII to meet the demands of the US military. After the war, lobbyists on behalf of the weapons industry argued to congress to maintain the high military budget, citing the Soviet Union as a genuine threat to the free world. The US has been involved in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, central America and south America. Lao people to this day are killed every year by unexploded bomb ordinance from the war. Areas of Vietnam remain contaminated by Agent Orange.

As for the Iraq War, the country was stable under the Sunni tyrant Saddam. Now the country is worse off than before the US came. Afghanistan is also in a state of turmoil and disrepair and the current regime has even been overheard negotiating a contingency plan with the Taliban.

In the final analysis, the United States is a country founded on its practice of slavery and genocide. The land was taken from the natives and worked by slaves from Africa.

The US has been involved in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, central America and south America. Lao people to this day are killed every year by unexploded bomb ordinance from the war. Areas of Vietnam remain contaminated by Agent Orange.

As for the Iraq War, the country was stable under the Sunni tyrant Saddam. Now the country is worse off than before the US came. Afghanistan is also in a state of turmoil and disrepair and the current regime has even been overheard negotiating a contingency plan with the Taliban.

Yes. I agree. For the most part, you are just filling in a few of the details of what I already said.

Note: You are conversing with a person who had his conscientious objector status approved while the U.S. military was still in Vietnam.

I have very mixed feelings about that conflict in particular. Much of what the U.S. did there was wrong. But only some of the motivation for doing it was perhaps wrong. And to claim that the U.S. acted as a sole aggressor would be just plain silly, as well as blatantly disingenuous to the people of the local region. A number of my current friends are Vietnamese. Others are Lao. All are grateful for what the U.S. attempted to do in Southeast Asia and many of their families participated. To point to the conflict in Vietnam and say, "Look! It's obvious that the U.S. is just plain evil to the core!" as many people do is to be inexcusably ignorant of the complexity of the situation.

And now for parts that are oversimplified to the point of being horribly misleading:

TexasCowboy wrote on 22nd Jun, 2014 at 2:39pm:

The warmongering nature of the United States is the reason it has so much power.

Oh, really? That's "the" reason? There aren't other reasons? How about the previous century's worth of economic and industrial development? How about a century worth of influx of vast numbers of ambitious people who wanted to leave the oppression of their homelands and do something different with their lives? (Yes, it may surprise some people to learn that America did not invent oppression.)

If a "warmongering nature" is "the" reason for power, what about the "power" of other warmongering nations like, say, Iraq, where, as I pointed out, people are STILL being killed every single day, sometimes in massive numbers? ... and not just by unexploded ordinance. They're being hunted down and killed by their neighbors.

Yes. As I already said, the U.S. royally messed up the situation in the Middle East. But "warmongering" alone as "the" source for "power"?? No. That just plain doesn't make any sense.

TexasCowboy wrote on 22nd Jun, 2014 at 2:39pm:

A private weapons industry sprung up during WWII to meet the demands of the US military. After the war, lobbyists on behalf of the weapons industry argued to congress to maintain the high military budget, citing the Soviet Union as a genuine threat to the free world.

Yes. And the Soviet Union was a "genuine threat to the free world." Ask my Polish friends if you don't think so.

The "domino theory" was not just a fabricated and imaginary excuse for U.S. militarism. It was an accurate description of active and ongoing Soviet aggression for quite a few decades.

The U.S. presence in Europe is not entirely unwanted and is certainly not just "U.S. imperialism," although one could say it is that to some extent also. But things are not that simplistic. In fact, some people in Poland think that the U.S. presence should expand and that the U.S. should have bases in Poland. Especially now.

TexasCowboy wrote on 22nd Jun, 2014 at 2:39pm:

In the final analysis, the United States is a country founded on its practice of slavery and genocide. The land was taken from the natives and worked by slaves from Africa.

"Founded" on "slavery"? Really? I guess that's why the U.S. economy completely collapsed 150 years ago when the U.S. decided to end slavery and has never recovered since. ::)

Are you actually serious about this statement? Do you not know anything about the rest of U.S. history? Motivations for people coming here? The rest of the economic and social development of the country? The wide variety of people who did so many different kinds of things to build the country?

And as for the slavery that did exist: At least the British and Spanish purchased their slaves (for the most part) from black Africans who rounded them up and owned them. Many of the other countries in which slavery has been prevalent in one form or another (which includes, by the way, perhaps the majority of the countries on Earth) have had to go and conquer them and haul them off their land all by themselves.

And note: Although it took the "civil war" era to outlaw slavery itself, the slave trade with Africa was abolished by the U.S. a number of decades previously. Most of the slaves were brought to those states where it was legal before the U.S. declared independence from Britain. And slavery was never legal in all of the states; it was only legal in the southern states.

And those lands where the English and Spanish purchased their slaves? Yes ... slavery is still rampant in many of those places.

TexasCowboy wrote on 22nd Jun, 2014 at 2:39pm:

The land was taken from the natives ...

Name a land anywhere in the world which has not been "taken" by one set of people from another set of people.

I dare you.

You will fail.

Even if you go back as far as Europe being "taken" from Neanderthal tribes 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.

have very mixed feelings about that conflict in particular. Much of what the U.S. did there was wrong. But only some of the motivation for doing it was perhaps wrong. And to claim that the U.S. acted as a sole aggressor would be just plain silly, as well as blatantly disingenuous to the people of the local region. A number of my current friends are Vietnamese. Others are Lao. All are grateful for what the U.S. attempted to do in Southeast Asia and many of their families participated. To point to the conflict in Vietnam and say, "Look! It's obvious that the U.S. is just plain evil to the core!" as many people do is to be inexcusably ignorant of the complexity of the situation.

Most of your Vietnamese and Lao friends probably immigrated to the United States to escape persecution. The United States only began to take a serious interest in Indochina because they sought to contain the spread of Marxism and the influence of the Soviet Union and the PRC. Resources like tungsten which were readily available in the region were also a consideration.

Many Vietnamese Americans argue that the American entry into the war is defensible because the southern regime invited them. But the southern republic was created as a French dependency. The French military, with moral and material encouragement from the United States, would continue to occupy Vietnam until 1956. At this point, with their empire already overstretched and after enduring a number of defeats at the hands of the Viet Cong, the French government chose to remove their forces and relocate them to Algeria, where another struggle for independence was being waged against the imperialist running dogs of the West. The United States took reign at this point and recognized the Republic of Vietnam under the leadership of Ngo Din Diem, a known Catholic and anti-Buddhist. Most historians agree that Diem implemented policies to benefit his fellow Catholics while intentionally trying to antagonize the traditional Buddhist community. His policies led to widespread discontent among the people. Eventually the CIA and the ARVN carried out a coup d'etat. A military dictatorship was established as a replacement and political power was concentrated in the hands of a junta of generals.

Most Vietnamese Americans were opportunists who collaborated with their government and American forces for power and wealth. Few of them were concerned about the well-being of their countrymen, otherwise they would've struggled against the occupation of their country. Of course, China and the Soviet Union played a hand in the north. But the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was a Vietnamese initiative, not a foreign backed creation like the southern regime.

Quote:

Oh, really? That's "the" reason? There aren't other reasons? How about the previous century's worth of economic and industrial development? How about a century worth of influx of vast numbers of ambitious people who wanted to leave the oppression of their homelands and do something different with their lives?

The narrative of most immigrants arriving on the shores of the United States to escape oppression is simplistic and incorrect. Most immigrants to the United States in the 19th and 20th century came to the country to escape starvation or to find opportunities as much of the land had yet to be developed. A fair argument exists suggesting that the Irish immigrated to escape English oppression but ultimately it was a matter of economics and food scarcity in Ireland that prompted so many to leave. The Germans and Scandinavians came to the country seeking farmland. It was not our government or our Constitution that mostly attracted people. It was, rather, the potential and possibility that a sparsely populated land had to offer.

The industrial revolution first occurred in England where many men, women, and children were uprooted from their land and forced to work long hours in factories for meager pay. The industrial revolution also spread to the United States and this is when society experienced a major upheaval. Before the industrial revolution, the majority of people were farmers or craftsman or managed small, household businesses. After the industrial revolution, more and more people flocked to cities where they worked for corporations. Craftsmen and household businesses could not compete with the efficiency of factories, where men, women, and children, many of them helpless immigrants, worked in dehumanizing conditions to produce manufactured goods.

Towards the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, labor unions organized to provide members with more dignified working conditions, shorter hours, and higher compensation. Although there were many problems, the union system worked quite well until the 1980s, when multinational corporations found that it would be more profitable to outsource the labor to developing countries where there are no labor regulations.

The enormous industrial buildup from the 1820s onward allowed the United States to build the most powerful military in the world. But why should the United States, a republic in the western hemisphere, build and maintain the most powerful military? It was because politicians wanted to extend the political and cultural power of the United States overseas. It was this warmongering nature that motivated the United States to invest so many resources and human lives into the creation of the modern American warmachine that we have today. The United States is directly responsible for the deaths of millions globally and indirectly responsible for any number of civil wars being fought around the world to this day.

Warmongering is obviously not the source of power. A tribe can be warmongering and territorial yet the power structure will fall apart when it encounters and contends with a more technologically advanced society. The Zulus encountering English colonizers is an example.

I was interrupted while writing this post so my train of thought is lost. I will hopefully respond to the rest of your post tomorrow.

I was interrupted while writing this post so my train of thought is lost. I will hopefully respond to the rest of your post tomorrow.

When you return, you may wish to revisit your thoughts about the conflict in Vietnam and the Soviet influence on the North, because you skipped over it with only the briefest acknowledgement. Vietnam is in a highly strategic location with regard to resources as well as shipping and the Soviet Union, with its fully acknowledged and often self-proclaimed worldwide imperialist domination desires had a very strong motivation to control the region.

The North was not just set of poor, beleaguered locals wringing their hands over what to do about those "evil imperialists." It was a fully Soviet-backed Marxist state.

And yes, all of my Southeast Asian friends came to the United States in order to escape persecution.

Soviet style Marxism is dangerous.

Especially to free-thinking and creative people. In many countries over the past 70 years, you could get your head blown off for whispering criticisms of the government that, in the United States, you could stand on the street corner and shout all day long and that people all over the country will pay money to read and see in the media.

As for the rest ... to a large extent, you are agreeing with me. People came to America for opportunity. But Germans coming here just for farm land? No. Some did. Many did not.

It is just one example, of course, but in my family history none of my German or Polish ancestors were farmers. Vast numbers of Germans and Poles came directly to American cities. The farmers in my ancestry were English (not Irish). (Oh ... and, by the way, none of them ever owned any slaves.)

I already mentioned the benefits of the worker unionization that is an integral feature of a free capitalistic system. Thank you for bringing that up again and reiterating several of my points, including (tacitly) referring to the so-far unrealized potential for that free-market process to be a similar benefit to countries to which some of our production has been off-loaded.

Too bad the process is not available in many countries with the comprehensive top-down command and control hierarchy that is necessary for a fully planned society. Unfortunately (and ironically) the lack of worker unionization in Marxist countries may inhibit the raising of the standard of living for workers in those countries. Hopefully not. But it certainly did in the Soviet Union for many decades, to the point that, for people who did manage to come to America from Russia during the Soviet era, the main thing many of them were absolutely astonished by was the availability of goods and necessities, including food, to average working class people.

I am curious: When you return, are you going to acknowledge the imperialism of Soviet Russia?

That is one item that you have skipped right over, I assume inadvertently, in your fervor to point out the U.S. as "imperialist."

Having military tanks rolling across the streets of most of one's nearest and dearest neighbors, as well as their neighbors also, and then shouting to the rest of the world the desire to do the same to them also, just might give rational-thinking people cause to think about ways of countering the process.

And some people might see the need for building a barbed wire fence around one's land and guarding it with machine guns to keep one's workers in place as perhaps just a hint that one's totalitarian style of planning and control has not exactly resulted in the workers paradise that one keeps claiming it has.

Unless, of course, one wishes to live in a country where independent worker unionization and advocacy is forbidden and people regularly get thrown in jail for merely saying the "wrong" things.

I pretty much agree that the USA offers most opportunities and freedom. China, Russia and the USA are all imperialists. I guess it's normal for a nation of that size to flex its muscles. I think socialism is good for a small country like Laos but wouldn't be for the USA. In the past Laos had 0 percent rates of HIV because it was isolated from the rest of the world. I wish they kept Laos an isolated haven. It is said that around the time of the vietnam war Laos was mostly tribal and each village was run by a village chief with no knowledge of the existence of their Laotian government. I wish they kept it like this because it would be amazing for anthropological study. Also now that Lao has been established as the language of education some of the younger people of Laos have stopped speaking their language in favor of Lao. To me those who do this look down on their parents and are the.lowest.form of traitor

Another example of lowlife traitors are Thai dogs. Whenever one of those animals learns to speak English they go flaunt it in their rural village and act as if they are superior because they let corporate America toss their salad. Most urban Thais will speak Thai mixed with English. The japanese should've wipes them out during the WWII occupation

Mak Nad, what is wrong with someone wanting to learn English? The language offers an enormous library of scientific and medical literature. Anyone who cultivates themselves is worthy of respect. Most people interested in learning Thai probably hope to apply their skills in the tourist industry. The country is already overwhelmed by foreigners with bad habits causing chaos and mayhem throughout the Kingdom. To study scientific English is worthy of admiration. To study English for the purpose of working in the tourist industry is worthy of contempt.

Use of English in Thai media is unacceptable. The government is setting a poor example by allowing this sloppy, creole Thai to be spoken on air. Just look at the Singaporeans. They can't speak proper English and they can't speak proper Chinese. They are one of the "freest" countries on the planet and their economy is outstanding. But surveys indicate that Singaporeans are some of the most miserable people on the planet. Because capitalism is the source of their being and money is what drives them forward.

I didn't say anything is wrong with them learning English, but they dont use English, ever. They all speak that Creole Thai, even with their parents who dont understand it, all to show off.

The Thais that come to America even use this Creole Thai when talking amongst themselves. Each year it seems they add more and more english words and drop more and more Thai words. It's their way of showing they're developed.

How about someone just line them up against a wall and pop them full of lead one by one?

Wow, that sounds like truly disgraceful behavior. Violence, however, is not the solution. The problem is the presence of large numbers of Westerners and allowing Thai TV to overwhelm folks with English speaking media. The solution is to outlaw English speaking material on air and to severely tighten up visa regulations so as to virtually eliminate the tourist industry.

Lol, if they virtually eliminated the tourist industry then who would all the whores in Pattaya and Phuket serve? Thailand would collapse without the tourist industry.

I just use violence as a figure of speech, I don't really condone it.

Not all Thais are this way actually. A lot of people from the countryside in Isan and Northern Thailand are quite nice, but that's because they are actually ethnic Laos. The real disgraceful Thais mostly come from Central and Southern Thailand, the ethnic Siamese.